Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

That’s me, and the other me, doing a happy dance.  If you want to know why I’m doing the happy dance it’s because Pen Noir has decided to put my writing up on their site for the month of March. For the next 30-31 days you can view my poems (“Lost Shoe Fugue,” “Post(post) Modern Creations,” and “For Emily”), as well as my short (a little shy of 8000 words) story (“Needs Must When the Devil Drives”) here.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for dropping by.

Neil Gaiman has posted the trailer for Coraline!

I was going to take a break from putting things up for a while, but then I saw this on the Peanut Albinos MySpace Blog and wanted to brag a bit. My cousin is in this band. I wanted to spread the cheer (heh):

REVIEW OF PEANUT ALBINOS @THE JERICHO TAVERN 01/02/08
Category: Music

The Peanut Albinos offer a compelling mixture of speakeasy jazz, Pogues-style aggression and beguiling ol’ timey country. For some reason, I found them rather scary; perhaps it was the beards and hats, or the rasping king-of-the-drunks excellence of the singer, but there felt an undercurrent of evil about some of the songs, especially the jazzy ones with their funereal banjo and air of mocking world-weariness. When the Great Depression hit and banker after banker took the plunge from the forty-first floor, you can imagine the Peanut Albinos playing away on the street corner as the emergency services searched the sidewalk for all the body parts. This sense of menace dissipates on the country songs where note-perfect harmony (with a spirit not far from The Band’s ‘Rockin’ Chair’ or even the odd track by our own Epstein) and instrumental tenderness are the watchwords, although the chord progressions are a little more sophisticated than in most country tunes.

Still, even with these lyrical interludes I couldn’t help thinking that the Peanut Albinos’ appearance may be a harbinger of hard times ahead, as if they were a group designed for some future Perfect Storm: Sub-Prime, Credit Crunch, Stock market Crash and Beckham being picked for England again. Put it this way, if they succeed, it probably means the rest of us are in the shit.
By Colin MacKinnon

http://www.oxfordbands.com/2008/02/02/peanut-albinos-ute-the-jericho-tavern-122008/

Imagine a band that look like a bunch of old-fashioned tinkers, who play skiffle banjo, mandolin and brushed drums with a masterful depth of dark gothic and celtic soul, but are mercifully devoid of any carousing Irish accents. London’s Peanut Albinos, in soft, battered, slept-in suits and hats, have an English take on longing, regret and coming to terms with consequences, all while making you think you are in a late night lock-in with Tom Waits on the Kilburn High Road.
Paul Carrea (Nightshift, Issue 152)

You can find downloads of the band’s music here.

And yeah, it does kinda make ya feel like checking to see that your emergency kit is packed and ready to go and that you have a back up plan for the end of the world…

This evening heard from someone else and a story of mine has been accepted! YAY! Did a happy dance. I opened the email with my eyes squinted just in case, but it was good news. I’ll let you know when it will be published when it gets close to the time, but it’s not going to be for a year or so.

Also got the schedule back of classes I’m taking to improve and update some of my skills. I was crossing my fingers that the check would go through. Apparently it did. That’s good.

Then, meeting with someone next week to discuss proofing for them on a regular basis. We’ll see how that goes. I have good hopes for it.

Now, back to this other thing I’m doing. I’m learning a lot more about astronomy than I ever thought I would. A lot of work getting through the terms, but I’m also learning a lot. And I’ll get paid eventually, which is good.

After I hit submit on my last blog (and obsessively read and edited and redid and resubmit it a few times), I went back to check my email and found an ACCEPTANCE in my inbox!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Non-paying and online only, but they like me! They really, really like me! The name of the ezine is Pen Noir. I had checked them out after they’d come by one of the groups I’m in on Tribe to say they were open for submissions. They are a very straightforward and basic market. On a monthly or so basis they post stories, art, and poetry of a darker nature. One link for each depending on what they have, I believe. I read the story that they had posted called “Flood” by Sybil Wilen and thought, “I like this story. I wonder if they would consider mine.” So I sent them some poetry and then on an enthusiastic whim sent them one of my stories and they said YES!

So I got the email, jumped up and down in my chair and then went to the phone and called my sister and my mom and then my best friend and told them I had been accepted (yes, really – no matter how large or small the market it always feels good) and then collapsed on the bed and napped with the cat.

Flood is a good read, IMHO, and you might enjoy popping over to Pen Noir to check it out yourself. My stuff will be there by the beginning of March. Never fear, I will obsessively remind people by then.

Okay, back to earning a living.

Well, I checked in online and I shouldn’t have. Should have left the computer off except I did have three leads for my sister I was able to forward her. So that was good. But I got another rejection and probably behaved in a self destructive manner as I replied to both editors telling them basically that I disagreed with them.

But I’m really tired of being taking hostage by what editors and agents think of us as writers. Fuck that! It’s like working for the prof’s approval in college all over again. You don’t write the paper to actually answer the question. NO! You write to the prof’s buzz words. You write to the committee’s pet ideas. You mimic what they want to hear. When you write what you want and not what they want then they reject you.

I don’t write just to seek approval from editors or agents and I don’t believe in kowtowing to people just so they MIGHT say yes next time. That’s shit. That might be okay for 20 somethings but I’m not a 20 something. I’m a middle-aged cranky writer dammit. I’m going to be 44 years old and if I feel like telling an editor or an agent or a boss or anyone else to fuck off then God fucking dammit I’m going to do it. That’s my right and I’ve earned it.

I’ve spent most of my life being a people pleaser. It hasn’t gotten me anywhere. I’m not doing it anymore. Maybe that means I don’t get the Random House deal. But the publishing world is not the closed club society it used to be. The music industry had to break open when artists went independent. Well, the publishing industry is going to have to deal with the same thing. Writers can do it, too.

I feel like I’ve been treading water in sludge. Last night/yesterday it felt like I was finally getting my life back. I had hung out at a cafe for the first time in months. On the spur of the moment, without feeling like I was being drug out, I went to a friend’s for dinner. I got home at a decent time and curled up in bed in some favorite pajamas with a cup of peppermint tea and a murder mystery by a favorite writer. I stayed up way late reading it thinking that I would spend my Saturday doing what I like doing best on Saturdays, house work in my pajamas after sleeping in nice and late. Maybe sit down and do some writing, read some from the To Be Read pile. So I get up to feed the cat and go back to bed and the phone starts ringing. I ignore it. It rings again, and Again, and AGAIN! It went off 5 times while I was trying to “sleep in” and that was just the beginning.

Once I got up, got some coffee and began listening to messages it was apparent that it wasn’t going to be a normal day. There were messages from friends, but there was also an emergency call from my sister and a call from a friend to meet for lunch. While I was trying to help figure out stuff for my sister via phone and email I got another phone call about lunch and decided to go ahead and meet my friends because it was apparent to me that I would be spending the rest of the day with the family emergency.

The lunch was delightful. I was right. I needed it. Had some girly time, picked up some much needed/required/wanted chocolate along with cat food and headed home, where I put out more feelers to help my sister. In the meantime I checked my email and sitting in my mailbox was a letter from an editor I’d sent a much loved story to. It was a rejection, I could feel it. I didn’t know it, but I could feel it. But I couldn’t stand to open it up, not today when everything was going to shit. I let it sit there. As long as I ignored it, it was like Schroedinger’s cat – both alive and dead.

My day wasn’t over. I had other friends who called who are having problems. One is dealing with her own feelings of rejection. Another is dealing with a dying father, a sick husband and adolescent sons. Another one is going to move her family soon and has a house that can’t be sold in the current market, whilst yet another is juggling her own needs with those of her developmentally disabled daughter and her husband as he starts his business. It was good to be reminded that as scared as I get when I think that all my plans are falling to shit, there are others out there who are also dealing with things that are difficult.

I’ve been sitting at the computer all day and it feels like I haven’t done a darn thing and I’ve worked really hard at it. Pye is worried. He keeps trying to sit on my hands and on the computer to get me to quit typing. He feels me as I get upset with what is going on. He knows I get upset when I’m at the computer and when I’m on the phone, so he tries to get me to stop being on the computer and on the phone. And yes I did open that email and it was a rejection. Let’s just say that Pye sat on my hands really hard trying to get me to stop being at the computer then.
Tomorrow I am not answering the phone and I swear I’m not going to be on the computer either. I want a good happy day, dammit. I want my life back.

As seen on Larchmont:

Man in a purple and brown striped shirt, cheetah faux fur vest, leopard sweat pants and old brown mushed fedora.

As heard while passing a group of high school girls:
“Oh my god! Romney is backing McCain! I hate McCain.”
“I like Obama.”

My trust in youth to carry on the democratic process is restored……..

BUT THEN

Later on

At the Starbucks (where you have to pay to use the HotSpot by the way – to get Tmobile internet) I have a 15 minute conversation with complete strangers about coffee and corporations and then there’s the guy who decides to play with all the different sounds his cell phone makes, as loud as the cell phone can be.

THEN there’s the lady in knee hi boots (jeans tucked in) walking around self-righteously as if she were in jodpurs (she does have a Public School accent) telling store how much she hates it when people aren’t civilized and don’t pick up after themselves (having a father who does the same thing I just look down at my keyboard and try not to giggle outloud).

Okay, so it’s costing a little bit to use the internet and my laptop at the coffee shop, but it’s paying back in entertainment. I can see why people do this now.

The laptop arrived this morning. Yes, it works. Started right up. Supposedly it has all the bells and whistles I asked for. Has iLife on it and Tiger (10.4.9) and an Airport Extreme card. But I neglected to get an airport base. Silly me. And the cordless mouse? I didn’t realize it needed batteries. And there is no MS Word on the laptop so I was going to transfer my files from my desktop to my laptop but how do I do that? I keep trying to do the firewire thing because I found (!) in my tool box an old firewire cord. But while the symbol comes up on the laptop, the icon does not pop up on the desktop. In the mean time, I have asked friends online for help. No reply. I have asked friends in real life for help. No reply. I have downloaded the quickstart manual for my laptop, tried to look up troubleshooting things and I’m pretty sure I’ve done as much as I can. I have made lists of things to buy when I have money again, gone on line and priced them and bookmarked them, and have figured out how to fix the mirror printing thing that my new printer does.

I still can’t do anything about trying to get online or my other files on the laptop. And in the meantime the sun has crossed over the sky and now it’s dark out and I’ve spent all day doing NOTHING with my laptop and yet doing NOTHING about anything else either. I have a headache. Feels like a complete waste of a day.

Ugh.

I did finish revising a story I was working on last night and got it printed out and in an envelope (after fixing that mirror printing thing).  Also got yet another rejection.

Happy Valentine’s Day to me.

I really want to be able to get myself up off the ground somehow, and to be able to take flight. In theory I know that it’s not the tools or the toys that make the person, but what you do with them that matters. However, having up to date tools and/or toys really does help matters along. Money doesn’t hurt either.

Because last year was so tough financially, I got a fairly hefty tax refund this year. I wasn’t sure what to do with my refund. I try to be responsible. Typically, it gets frittered away over nothing while I try to decide what to do with it. I didn’t want this to happen this year. Should I pay rent ahead one month with it? Pay down bills? Pay back loans from friends and family? Or splurge a little?

In an effort to be both practical and fun, I did a little research into getting what’s called an “All in One” (Copier/Printer/Fax/Scanner) and maybe a laptop. Some of my new assignments were requiring me to sign and fax copies of documents and the trip to the local Fedex/Kinkos was taking bites out of my time.  I also wondered if I was being penny wise and pound foolish in not investing in equipment that could help me increase my business later on. On the way home from one of my trips to Kinkos I stopped by the Office Depot to look at these machines close up and do some pricing. They weren’t the big, bad ugly things I thought they’d be, and the prices were okay as well. After I got home I did a little more research and found this All in One (called by Brother a Multi Function Center) that with rebate would cost me all of $50.

Friday, I received my check and ordered my Brother Multi-Function Center. Today, around 9 AM it arrived, and then sat on my desk a perky parcel, useless in functionality until I could figure out how to get it going. I read the instructions. Sorta. Went through the materials included, kinda. I had set up faxes before at work, but they were just faxes, with dedicated phone lines. I had set up printers at work before, but that had been with an already built in ethernet. I’ve even unjammed copiers and shaken up toner in efforts to eek out as much as possible before bosses were willing to drag their buts to the store to buy more toner and print cartridges. So, I was used to this, or so I thought.

I installed the software. Plugged in the USB cord. And then seemed to lose the device on the computer. It was an old USB cord, but I didn’t think it mattered, except for the small print saying it worked best with a high speed USB 2.0 cord no longer than 6 feet.

Damn.

I’d hoped I could return that brand new cord and use the old one. So, I switched out the cords. And the device still didn’t show up. So I reinstalled the software, plus the scanner software I’d forgotten to install the first time.  I programmed the MFC so the fax was set at the right time and date and my name and number. Felt good about that, until someone tried to call me and I couldn’t answer my own phone because the fax was set to fax and not phone. So, I fixed that.

Tried figuring out the copier function but couldn’t get it to print anything in black. Despite the instructions that said not to touch the ink cartridges once they were installed, I checked on those and realized that the black one was installed wrong. Fixed it. Still didn’t print.

Decided to return to the printer problem on the computer for a while. The computer still wasn’t “finding” the printer for some reason. I had switched to the brand new USB cord. I had run a disk repair even. Plus, once again, reinstalled software, with th the MFC turned off and unplugged as instructed. I was frustrated and puzzled. I had been duped, I just knew it.

I looked over at the MFC. Of course. Could it be that simple? All the instructions had said to make sure the MFC was unplugged and turned off while installing the software.  Diligently, every time I had gone to fiddle with the software, I had unplugged and turned off the MFC. This time I got up, plugged in the MFC and pressed the on button. Miraculously, my computer was now able to “find” the printer and install it.

After that (phew!) running the machine through a few cleaning cycles until the black finally worked was a no brainer.  Since then I’ve spent the rest of the evening finding excuses to make copies of paperwork and print out letters that needed to be sent while watching Star Trek. That’s been my day.

Can’t complain about markets that only take hard copy submissions any more, not when I have the tools for the job. Indeed, I have been working on revising a short story all evening. I’m going to stop now and take another look at it tomorrow and then PRINT it out, with a cover letter and MAIL it to the magazine. Ha, HA!

Next time, I’ll let you know about the adventures with the new laptop.